Sources – NFLPA, NFL agreed to keep collusion findings secret

The NFL and senior leaders of the NFL Players Association struck an unusual confidentiality agreement that hid the details of an arbitration decision from players, including a finding that league executives had urged team owners to reduce guaranteed player compensation, multiple sources told ESPN.

On Jan. 14, arbitrator Christopher Droney ruled there wasn’t sufficient evidence of collusion by owners in contract negotiations with quarterbacks after the record, fully guaranteed contract signed by quarterback Deshaun Watson in 2022. Any such collusion to keep salaries down would violate the collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and the union.

But Droney concluded that the NFLPA showed “by a clear preponderance of the evidence” that commissioner Roger Goodell and the league’s general counsel Jeff Pash had urged owners to restrict guaranteed money in player contracts.

The confidentiality agreement had kept details of the 61-page ruling a secret until two weeks ago, when the “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast published the document and created a stir among union members. Some players told ESPN that they were surprised by details in the ruling and that they didn’t understand why the union hadn’t shared the ruling with them.

On Tuesday night, nearly six months after Droney’s decision, the NFLPA, led by executive director Lloyd Howell Jr., decided to seek an appeal of the ruling, a senior union source told ESPN.

“The appeal is a reflection of our obligation to enforce the CBA and our commitment to protecting our players’ interests,” the source said. “We’ll do what’s best for players, and we’ll exhaust our options in doing so.”

The arbitration case centered on discussions among league executives and owners after the Cleveland Browns signed Watson to a record $230 million, five-year guaranteed contract on March 18, 2022, and whether the talks affected negotiations with QBs Kyler Murray, Lamar Jackson and Russell Wilson. None of the three signed guaranteed deals.

Droney included text exchanges and emails among league executives and owners in his ruling, saying that “concerted action was contemplated and invited at the March 2022 owners meeting.”

The union declined to answer questions Wednesday about why the decision to appeal took nearly six months or about the grounds for its appeal, which under the CBA will be heard by a panel of three arbitrators. A league spokesperson also declined to comment Wednesday.

Attorney Peter Ginsberg, who has represented many NFL players for decades, said he was stunned to hear about the confidentiality agreement.

“As the head of the union, Lloyd has an obligation to protect the best interests of the players,” said Ginsberg, a lawyer at Moskowitz Colson Ginsberg & Schulman. “By agreeing to a confidentiality agreement, the union purposefully blocked the players from receiving crucial information about the operations of the NFL.

“The NFL and the union should not be conspiring together to keep important information from the players.”

The union’s decision to appeal a nearly 6-month-old decision comes at a time when Howell’s leadership of the NFLPA has come under scrutiny on multiple fronts. Sources told ESPN that the union last month hired Ronald C. Machen of law firm Wilmer Hale to work with a special committee of players to review Howell’s activities as the executive director. Machen declined to comment Wednesday.

According to sources, the Machen-led inquiry was triggered by ESPN reporting in May that the FBI and federal prosecutors are investigating the union’s financial dealings related to a multibillion-dollar group-licensing firm, OneTeam Partners. The firm was co-founded in 2019 by the NFLPA and the Major League Baseball Players Association. Howell and MLBPA executive director Tony Clark are on the OneTeam board.

Under the terms of the confidentiality agreement between the union and the NFL, the 61-page arbitration ruling was to be shared only with league and union lawyers and a handful of senior union and league executives while the NFLPA considered its next legal move. Multiple sources said Droney, the arbitrator, was aware of the confidentiality agreement.

Droney declined to comment when reached by ESPN.

Not long after the agreement was struck, Howell briefed the executive committee of 10 active players and union president Jalen Reeves-Maybin, a Detroit Lions linebacker, in a conference call. According to several sources briefed on the meeting, Howell informed the committee that the NFLPA had lost its collusion grievance but did not share any details of Droney’s findings or share copies of the ruling with the players. Instead, he blamed his predecessor, DeMaurice Smith, for wasting resources on the three-year legal battle. Smith filed the grievance in October 2022.

Multiple sources familiar with the union’s history say they’re not aware of the union previously striking a confidentiality agreement with the NFL that kept arbitration rulings from being shared with the union’s executive committee and 32 player representatives.

Despite the CBA stating that members of the executive committee and player reps have the right to receive copies of all arbitration rulings, that did not happen in this case: Last March, at the NFLPA’s annual meeting held in Hawai’i, copies of the ruling were not shared with the NFLPA’s 32 player representatives, union sources told ESPN.

During Smith’s 14-year tenure as executive director, he and union lawyers routinely shared copies of arbitrators’ rulings with members of the executive committee and player representatives, several sources told ESPN.

Four executive committee members, Oren Burks, Thomas Morstead, Ted Karras and Cameron Heyward, declined to comment to ESPN. Heyward declined to talk because the situation at the union was “dicey,” he said.

An NFLPA player representative, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, told ESPN that in the week after the ruling became public, the union did not send out any communication to its player representatives regarding the arbitrator’s decision.

Veteran NFL agent Mike McCartney, who negotiated the first multiyear fully guaranteed NFL contract, for quarterback Kirk Cousins, said Droney’s conclusion that the management council encouraged teams to reduce guaranteed money would have been useful to players and agents working to negotiate deals in the past six months.

“In the end, transparency protects everyone: players, agents and the integrity of the process,” McCartney said.

Lorenzo Alexander, a 15-year NFL veteran who served on the executive committee from March 2014 through March 2021, told ESPN that during his tenure, “There typically was some type of communication or updates as far as, this is what’s going on, this is what we’re doing, especially with the president.

“The executive committee members might not have been called up for the day-to-day stuff, but typically, the president and executive director work pretty closely, from my experience.”

One former player representative, who asked not to be named, questioned the union’s silence about the arbitrator’s ruling. “My first reaction was, like, why in the heck would they not tell the players or not want this to be public? Like, what’s going on?” the player said.

“And then I thought, well, the strategy-makers for the union, they do tend to keep a lot of things pretty buttoned up … So my hope is that there’s a good reason why they did it.”

According to the CBA, appeals to arbitration decisions must be filed within 10 days. Sources familiar with the matter said the confidentiality agreement contained language that allowed the union to exceed that deadline and also allowed the league additional time to seek reimbursement of its legal costs.

On Wednesday, a source familiar with the league office said the NFL notified the union of its intention to seek legal fees and costs in excess of $12 million. The union elected Howell as executive director in June 2023. He was paid $3.4 million last year. According to a source who heard Howell’s pitch to the executive committee, he ran on a platform of fresh ideas and transparency.